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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087563">Eye Like a Pie in the Sky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/libbertyjibbit/pseuds/libbertyjibbit'>libbertyjibbit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bad Ending, Body Horror, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Eyes, M/M, Post-Season/Series 04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:34:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/libbertyjibbit/pseuds/libbertyjibbit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the Watcher's Crown, things fall apart. Jon is suffering, and Martin makes plans to stop it, by any means necessary.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>85</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eye Like a Pie in the Sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jon screams and thrashes for the first two days after the Watcher’s Crown succeeds, head flung back and tendons standing out on his neck. He screams so loud and so long that Martin is sure his voice will give out, but it never does, just goes on and on until Martin isn't sure that he's not screaming, too.</p><p>On the second day he goes outside. He doesn't want to, but if he stays in that safe house with Jon's screaming he will go mad, he knows he will. Go mad with the noise and the terror and his own inability to help. He's tried everything he can think of, but nothing gets through to him, and Martin has had experience with insanity but never like this.</p><p>The screams follow him out.</p><p>They aren't Jon's, and that's a relief, but the air is full of them, anyway; they are faint all the way out here, but that's even worse. That so many are screaming, and at such volume that he <em>can </em>hear them.</p><p>Then he makes the mistake of looking up, and meeting one of the eyes.</p><p>He screams. He knows that he screams; his mouth is wide and his throat is being stripped raw by the force of them, but he can no longer hear. He eye eats up all of his vision, looking into him, deep, deeper, deepest, ripping everything he is out of his head as carelessly as a child pulling tissue paper out of a bagged gift, tossing it aside until they get to the shiny bauble inside.</p><p>It's the Lonely that saves him, and wouldn't that make Peter laugh? He drags it around him out of sheer desperation, that old need to get out, get <em>away</em>, and for a wonder it comes, envelopes him in that old, familiar fog, and Martin almost sobs with relief as he feels the Eye release him. It could find him again if it wanted - in this new world, no one can hide from its gaze for long - but catching him had been more accident than design, and it lets him go.</p><p>He has to be careful getting back. Space and time are different here, and if he could wind up far over or undershooting his target. It's happened before. Everything around him is gray and cold. He tries not to find it comforting.</p><p>He knows immediately that something is wrong, although it takes a moment to figure out what. Jon isn't screaming.</p><p>Martin rips himself out of the Lonely, terror twisting his heart and making it hard to breathe. He feels sick, disoriented, his head fuzzy from being penetrated without finesse, his body prickling as it adjusts to being warm again, but he doesn't care. He has to get to Jon, has to help him.</p><p>He isn't in the bed, and for a moment Martin thinks that he has left the house completely, wandered through the door and found (<em>or was led</em>, Martin thinks, and shudders) somewhere far away from there to scream.  Then he hears his voice. He turns towards the sound, unable to help himself, a half smile forming - he's always loved Jon's voice, and surely being able to speak is a sign he’s finally getting better - and then freezes, staring.</p><p>Jon is seated in the room's only chair, facing the now-open window, staring into the eye-filled sky. His eyes are wide and glazed, an expression of horrified ecstasy on his face as he talks and talks. Martin moves as close as he dares – keeping well out of that square of window with its endless expanse of eyes – close enough to hear, and he doesn’t need to see the recorder perched on the side of the chair to know that he is recording a statement.</p><p>As before, Jon does not lose his voice. He talks and talks without pause, without rest, as statement after statement pours into his brain and out of his mouth, and endless stream that threatens to drive Martin out of his mind. He knows how those statements are being drawn, the pain of it, the helplessness, sees how they are breaking what is left of Jon; sees the way his hands twitch and writhe against the arms of the chair where he sits, sees his legs spasm as though he’s trying to run. But he is caught, trapped as much as anyone else under the Eye, a tool for an insatiable, insensate god that knows nothing of gentleness, of mercy. It only knows how to devour.</p><p>He tries to close the window only once, thinking that cutting Jon off from those eyes will do him more than a little good, even with the screaming. He barely makes it halfway before Jon’s eyes are on him, cold and unfeeling, and Martin starts to tremble, skin vibrating with the force of the compulsion as words begin to spill from his mouth. It lasts only a moment before Jon’s eyes cut back to the window, to the endless stream of statements, but it feels like an eternity to Martin, and when it is over he crawls to the bed and sleeps, sleeps and dreams of darkness, of things inside of it with biting mouths and ripping claws. He screams but does not wake, and beyond the terror and the pain he can feel the cold satisfaction of the Eye as it watches, and feeds.</p><p>When he wakes he knows what he has to do.</p><p>He keeps his mind occupied, filling it with senseless words and rhymes that make him feel as though he is going mad</p><p>(<em>there’s an eye in the sky oh me oh my)</em></p><p>but underneath he plots, plans. He’s done this before, kept the surface full of mundanity so that he could hide his true thoughts farther down, make plans that wouldn’t be observed, but that was against an opponent who didn’t see him as a threat. He doesn’t know what this one sees; only knows that he hasn’t been allowed to get close.</p><p>He found the vial and syringe on their first day, hidden in a hollow book on one of the shelves. He still doesn’t know what made him pick that particular book to try and read, only that he had and that he’d put it back silently, without telling Jon. Had he suspected, then, that he might need it? Yes, he thinks, deep down where he hides</p><p>(<em>eye like a pie what a lie slice of rye)</em></p><p>that feels like the truth. Some other Entity, perhaps, trying to prevent the unpreventable. This was always going to happen – Jon was too perfect. And Martin can’t stop the Beholding, never could, but he might be able to stop it hurting Jon any more than it already has.</p><p>He doesn’t waste time. To do so could only make him second guess himself, and the longer he waits the more likely it is that he'll be noticed. He wraps the Lonely around him once again, pulls it over his head like a child seeking protection against the terrors of the night, and walks into the bedroom.</p><p>He knows that he doesn’t have much time. The windows are first, shutters banging down and jerking Jon out of his trance. He screams, but it is not the scream of pain from before; he has advanced too far for that. It is a scream of rage. His eyes sweep over the room, searching, and Martin knows that they will find him soon. They will rip the shroud of Loneliness off of him and he will be devoured.</p><p><em>Now, </em>he thinks, too loud, and Jon’s head swivels in his direction, bright gaze finding him at last. His scream this time is one of triumph.</p><p>Martin screams too, flinging himself forward, mind already starting to flay open</p><p>(<em>pierce the eye have to try get a sty JON IF YOU’RE IN THERE PLEASE DON’T LET ME DIE)</em></p><p>and stabs the needle into Jon’s neck, depressing the syringe before he falls to the floor, still screaming and now writhing as well as those eyes fix on him and begin to <em>take</em>.</p><p>Then they close, and Jon slumps in his chair in a drugged sleep. Martin is left sprawled in front of him, head aching, tears running down his cheeks. It would be lovely to sleep himself, he thinks, but there is still so much left to do.</p><p>~****~</p><p>Martin leans over Jon’s prone form, knife in hand, hesitating. He doesn’t want to do this. Doesn’t want to hurt him. He has never caused physical harm to another person in his life, and he doesn’t think he can now. All the planning, and here he is, hovering over the eye of the man he has to hurt to save, unable to make the move that will save him. He will hover in indecision until Jon wakes, and then the choice will be out of his hands.</p><p>No.</p><p>Martin closes his eyes. “I love you, Jon, and I’m sorry,” he says</p><p>(<em>eye oh my the sky it’s a lie let it die oh god oh god oh god don’t die don’t sigh I will cry it's no lie do it martin if you’ve ever loved him his eye can it cry have to try have to have to hurt the eye in the sky with a lie piece of pie do it do it NOW)</em></p><p>and brings the knife down.</p><p>Springy resistance, and then a soft popping noise that echoes in his head and turns his stomach. Martin opens his eyes. He has to, has to be able to see to do the rest, but oh, he doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to have the sight of blood and a thin, watery mucous dribbling out of the place where Jon’s eye used to be, doesn’t want to be here feeling the knife catch against bone as he scrapes Jon’s eye out of its socket, as he makes two, then three passes to ensure it’s entirely gone. The sound the knife makes in the empty socket makes him think of fingers sliding over sandpaper, and no, that’s it, he can’t stand it. Martin turns his head to the side and is violently ill, feeling sick, feeling monstrous; he’s not even halfway done.</p><p>Once started, however, he knows he has to finish, and that helps to make it easier. So does having nothing left in his stomach. He finishes the first eye, covers it with a cloth that is immediately soaked in red, and moves to the second with gritted teeth.  </p><p>Jon wakes up before he finishes. He screams, and tries to thrash, to turn his head away from the knife, from what’s being done to him, but Martin has planned for this, too – of course he has, that’s Martin, he <em>plans</em> – and the paralytic that he’d injected after the ketamine is still working, though maybe not for much longer. Martin works quickly, finishing up and covering that eye as well, changing the dressing on the other before tying a third strip of cloth around Jon’s head in a makeshift blindfold. Jon is no longer screaming, but the noises he is making are worse – pained moans and whimpers that hurt Martin’s heart to hear.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he says over and over, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I had to, I’m sorry.”</p><p>Jon doesn’t respond, and Martin realizes that he has passed out again. Martin lays him gently on the bed and covers him with the threadbare blanket, then cleans up his mess and fairly collapses in the chair by the window, exhausted and heartsick. He closes his eyes and doesn’t think about anything.</p><p>When he wakes, he knows that Jon is, too, although he hasn’t moved. Martin scrambles out of the chair and sits on the bed next to him, fresh tears filling his eyes at the pain written all over Jon’s wasted face.</p><p>“I’m so sorry,” is the first thing he says, reaching for his hand. It is warm and lax in his; the fingers don’t so much as twitch. “I just-you were in pain and I couldn’t-“</p><p>“I wasn’t in pain,” Jon says, and for the first time his voice sounds rusty, overused. “I wanted it.” Martin shakes his head, unable to speak, horrified at what Jon is saying as Jon continues in that rusty, dead voice. “I liked it. It felt good. And now I can’t feel anything.”</p><p>Martin waits, but no more is forthcoming. Jon simply continues to lie passively, the gentle rise and fall of his chest the only sign that he is alive. When he can stand it no longer Martin drops his hand and leaves the room, knowing that he is fleeing but unable to help himself. He’s worried that if he stays longer, Jon will have more unpleasant truths to reveal.</p><p>It’s the last thing Jon ever says to him.</p><p>He enters the room the next morning with some trepidation, expecting to see Jon still on the bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. But he’s not there. And now Martin can hear him speaking softly, voice once more unbroken, and he knows what he will see if he turns his head.</p><p><em>Don’t then</em>, he thinks, but of course he has to.</p><p>Slowly, so slowly, he turns to look, as unable to keep himself from looking as he would be to keep from breathing. He has to see. Has to know.</p><p>The window is open, and Jon sits in the chair, head tilted back, expression of intermingled joy and terror on his face. His mouth moves, giving a statement, speaking only slightly louder than the whir of the recorder at his left. Martin’s blindfold is still on his head, covering what Martin can only assume are two empty sockets. It doesn’t matter; he doesn’t need them anymore.</p><p>Every inch of him is covered in eyes.</p><p>Different shapes and sizes, they look curiously around the room, blinking at odd intervals. Martin sees a large green iris peering out from the crook of Jon’s elbow, two browns lining his right wrist, a grey just under his ear. His hands are resting on the arms of the chair, palms up, and in the center of each palm is a large red eye. These eyes are not looking around. They are fixed on the sky, wide open and rapt, drawing the statements that Jon will speak into the recorder. Feeding him.</p><p>Martin feels the scream building, feels it clawing its way through his body, a desperate animal whose only escape is his throat. He opens his mouth to let it out, and the red, red eyes turn from the window to fix on him.</p><p>Everything stops. The scream dies somewhere between Martin’s chest and his throat, rotting there, choking him. His bladder lets go, and his mind puts out one last, horrified thought</p><p>
  <em>(the eye is bright the eye is good now jon must thank it for his food)</em>
</p><p>before doing the same, both voiding themselves in the same painless rush. Martin drops to the floor, cracking his head. He doesn’t know or care. His body continues to live, to breathe, but it is empty, as empty as a doll’s. His mind is with the Eye, and as the eyes in Jon’s hands turn back to the window Jon’s voice fills the air, giving Martin Blackwood’s last statement.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading! If you feel like it, please let me know what you thought. :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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